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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mallus" data-source="post: 1745304" data-attributes="member: 3887">It's more accurate to say that the series was like a train deliberately being driven off the tracks into a ravine. It was all intentional... not that anyone should like it better for that, though I did.For years I've gone back and forth whether Covenant is great or awful. In hindsight, I think its a good work. Donaldson's take on wish-fulfillment fantasy is still bracing over 20 years later... I just wish he would have challenged fantasy lit's tendancy to be monumentally overwritten --say like Zelazny did w/Amber, or Brust did later-- as well as all the other trope-wrangling he did...And thinking back, I've come to love the 2nd Chronicles of TC... especially The One Tree... its the only long quest novel that I can think of where the protagonists utterly fail [from their POV, at least] and basically just slink away. And Donaldson wasn't content with messing w/ notions of 'the hero', he had to write 3 more books where he violates the cherished idea of the ideal, pastoral Candyland itself... he gives Middle Earth cancer in the second series --I felt more for the corruption of the setting than I did for any of the characters. Oh, and the Sandgorgon was just plain cool.I'm looking forward to the new books. I just need to set phasers on 'skim'...</blockquote>